Thread: Car buying war stories.....

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Back in the early 80's a friend told me he saw an old hot rod in an old storage building. It turned out to be a 34 Ford steel 3 window coupe! The manager of the storage facility said he'd been trying to buy it for 15 yrs but the owner wouldnt part with it. I asked for the owners address and he gave it to me but was laughing at me at the same time. Long story short, that manager was sooooo pissed as he had to fork lift the car out of the building to load it on my trailer...... Right place, right time.......

Here she is after a little work....

It was a l-o-o-o-n-g time ago when I was 17. There was a '32 Ford on Hungry Hill for sale - cheap. I went to see it---and it was a 3W coupe with a 59A-B flathead. I drove it - ran nicely. The price- almost out of my reach. $35 US Dollars That's right, thirty five dollars. Got it home. Someone then offered me a profit of over 100% for it - $75. Being young and even dumber then I am today, sold it. The guy ended up trying to chop the top - I graduated from HS, went to college, got drafted and that's when I lost track of the car. Did it get melted down for new Volkswagen's or Honda's or is it still around - not a clue.

Next - needed a car for my daughter for college, so found a 3-4 year old Granada coupe, 6cyl, 250 w/standard top loader. A retired local cop had bought it new so really didn't have a lot of miles on it, ~50K, but it looked like crap - all four corners had dings to pretty good size dents - evidently he had used the fenders and the rear bumper to help guide him into the garage after his regular afternoon "social hour(s)" at a local pub. I bought the car cheap, did the brakes, ball joints, added some new tires, straightened and painted it, drove it for a while JIC something blew - all, including the purchase price, for about $1000. My daughter drove it for 2 years, then she bought a Toyota p/u. This meant I now had a work car. This Granada was used for a weekly 800 mile work related round trip for almost 2 years, plus whatever other running around I did. I then sold it with 235K miles on it for $295, the engine was never apart, it didn't burn oil, the throw out bearing that squealed at 50K was still squealing. The guy that bought the car was still driving it 2 years later and loved it - even with that throwout bearing noise.